Dream Eater
by LeonaWriter
Summary: "You'd better be careful." Those were the words the spirit of the Millennium Ring would hear - either from the half-asleep voice, or simply as a shiver up his spine as he worked. He was possessing a dream eater in human form, after all. "Or one day I'll mistake you for a bad dream." AU. Inspired by the Baku of Japanese mythology.


His mother had died before she could tell him, and his sister with her. Yet when his father had explained to him - how he was only _half_ human, how his mother had been a _Baku_, a dream eater that had come to him in dreams and then made him believe that he was still dreaming when she appeared to him in the waking world, how he had fallen for her, and how Ryou and Amane were not, had not ever been completely human…

Perhaps he took it a little too well.

It wasn't as though he'd been entirely unversed in the idea. He'd always known he was different. Just not in what way. His world had still been shaken, but perhaps the news would have done more if it hadn't been so soon, if he hadn't just lost his mother and sister.

After that, his father tended to avoid him, worried and wary but still fond of him, wanting to love him despite his strangeness.

On his birthday, he found dreamcatchers. On his next Christmas, a dream diary. He didn't write in it much, though, and liked the dreamcatchers best, hanging them up around his room like most boys would aeroplanes or spaceships.

Perhaps this was why his father had encouraged him the next Christmas to play with others, to open a box filled with pre-made characters, and pretend. He'd enjoyed it, pretending he was someone else.

He realised later that it was probably partially because it was what you did in a dream, when you weren't dreaming of the past. You played a part. The part the dream, your subconscious, gave you. If you lived and were jolted out of the dream or simply woke, you won. If you died in the dream, then you either woke and lost, or gained another life and carried on until you couldn't.

Role playing games helped keep his mind off of the loss, and away from the unsettling interest in the dreamcatchers. Yet at the same time he was an odd boy and those around him knew it - mind distant, yet sharp, appearance pale as though he were hardly there, and any slight breeze might cause him to drift off into the wind in a thousand motes of dust.

He learned to sculpt. It was just clay, but it would do. Sometimes he used other materials, and that also did well enough.

By the time his father saw the golden pendant that looked so much like a dreamcatcher that it couldn't be ignored, his hands were skilled. And when he saw the gold and the shape, and the fact that it could be worn, he never let it out of his sight.

Which had to be the reason why their life turned from a strange dream into a slowly growing nightmare.

…

_I'm not dreaming_, he found himself thinking. He'd know if he were dreaming. He always knew. He even knew if anyone else was dreaming, which set him apart from most who could even do the first. _And yet I'm not really awake, either. But I am moving._

Which was odd. Most people couldn't move while they slept - and not to this degree of precision.

_Ah._

A conclusion was reached.

_Him_.

He'd agreed to put the Ring back on, his precious golden dreamcatcher, and instead of keeping bad dreams locked away, it instead had let a nightmare out. Inside his mind, distant from everything in between the waking and sleeping worlds, he sighed, somewhat irritated. This wasn't, after all, how it was supposed to go.

_You'd better behave,_ he found himself thinking in no direction at all. _You're a dream, after all. A bunch of memories put together. And bad dreams can still be just memories we don't want to remember._

His spirit, caught between realms, yawned and stretched as the one using his body stiffened and then would have laughed had the noise not been likely to draw attention in the night and the dark of the castle. _And what have you got to threaten me with?_ It asked, not even knowing if the question would get through, or answered. More rhetoric than anything.

_I'm a Baku. _Said simply. No more than stated fact. The last syllable was not left off by accident, and nor was there a capital letter added by chance. _If I wish, I'll eat you._ _Just like that._

No one saw a smile full of sharp teeth as the one in control of the body would have laughed, to know it had something decent - more than just a boy. Possibly even a being to be reckoned with.

Perhaps he was a nightmare, after all. But he was far, _far_ more than a bunch of memories put together.

…

_I'm not dreaming again, although I wish I was._

If he'd been dreaming, the cut of the knife would have been gone by the time he woke up, and depending on how much he thought the dream was real, it would only leave a faint silver line by morning.

Since he wasn't, he would heal as any would, unless he dreamed again and this time that he would heal. Somehow, he doubted, irritably, that he would get the opportunity.

If he'd been dreaming, he'd have known all there was to know of the other. But he wasn't, so nothing was learned.

He was frustrated, and wished that their deck of cards hadn't been tampered with.

_I would have won well enough without your help, whoever-you-are. That was rude._

The spirit laughed, this time uncaring that it was at thin air. Awake, was he? And thinking he was rude? How was the deck worse than the fact that he was walking around in the boy's body?

Ryou closed in-between eyes and day dreamed of a memory. His other, stabbing his hand through.

In the waking world, his other yelped in pain and a few passers by looked on strangely, although there was no bleeding, and the wound closed in seconds.

_You're there because I permit it,_ he said almost lazily. But the spirit, not laughing now, could see past the apparent laziness. Past the apparent sleepy boredom. The boy cared. But what for? If- _The cards,_ Ryou continued_, are made up of dreams. They're mine. My imaginings. If you wanted your own dreams, you could have built your own, not taken mine from me. That… _

There was a long pause, and during it the spirit of the ring thought that the boy had gone to sleep inside his mind again. He found he preferred things that way, now that he knew what the _Baku_ was capable of.

_…that's offensive, that's what it is._

He swallowed. Not much unsettled him, not any more, but six words and he was on edge.

There was nothing more he could do now. The deck had been undone and remade. There was no time to do things differently.

_When you get us out of this mess, you'll put my dreams back where they came from, put them right. And then, I'll let you build your own._

He wondered what the boy meant by 'this mess', wondered how much of the situation was grasped, and if he'd ever have need of the cards again after the tournament was over. Probably not. And if so, he wouldn't have need of 'building' his own 'dreams'.

…

"You see," a voice said in amidst the shadows and darkness. "I _told_ you that you'd have to get us out of this mess. Now look. We've got to rely on the Pharaoh as well, _and_ to rid us of a nightmare."

The spirit looked around, wondering why the speaker seemed so familiar - but then, his mind was in disarray, having just had his soul taken apart piece by piece.

Pale luminescence glowed from one small area. A boy, sitting cross-legged, a dreamcatcher around his neck. Not the Millennium Ring that was currently around Marik's - a real one, feathers and all. The boy looked down at it, noticing that he was being observed.

"I like them," he said. "To be honest, I think you're to blame. Did you know that some people dream of the future?"

He knew that the Millennium Tauk had shown visions. But then, there had been others in the dusts of time who had visions and none of them had needed blood magic for it. So maybe that was true.

"I think some of the future bled back, and father knew. If he hadn't bought me dreamcatchers, he wouldn't have given me the Ring, and you wouldn't be free."

The shadows flickered, and the light that had seemed to surround the boy shifted. In that moment, he was very much aware that he was in a realm of monsters, somewhere he shouldn't be, regardless of what he called himself and thought of himself.

For a moment, Ryou Bakura didn't look human.

"I've got an idea," the boy said, sounding for once like a boy rather than something else. "How about we play a game to pass the time. We can't control our fate on the outside, so… how about we play for who wakes up first?"

A game then, was it? It could have gone worse. Things could have gone _much_ worse. A game, he could and should be able to win.

"All right, then." The smile, set in a face almost an exact mirror to the boy's own even here, was sharp. "What kind of game do you suggest?"

Ryou tapped his face before coming up with an idea. There were limited options here, although he had a funny feeling they weren't as limited as he'd like.

"How about truth or dare?"

He stared.

"And how do you suggest we play _that?"_

A shrug.

"Truths are simple. Dares, we perform either within the dream or once we are awake again. Penalties are points. The more you have, the less chance it'll be you who wakes up first."

Ideas ran through his head like coyotes after a meal when hungry. Much as he hated to admit it, he had every faith in damned and cursed Pharaoh to get them out. Therefore, his plans were not done with yet.

"Truth."

It would allow him time to think, decide.

"What was it that made you cry when you slept? It was long ago, but it lingers."

Silence. Stunned silence.

"I asked you a question."

…

They found him stuffing his face, as though he hadn't eaten in weeks. He told them that he'd just woken up outside, not knowing how he'd got there - in one sense he was being honest, but in another, it was all blatant lies.

Perhaps taking the Ring like that was theft, but now he knew theft like an old and worn glove over the hand that it had been made for. Old memories stretching and being exercised anew.

The lies took a little more, but came easily enough.

From then on, as often as he could, he would sleep with the Millennium Ring underneath his pillow, one hand touching the warm gold as he slept, and out would come the dreams. His own, not, it didn't matter. Both mingled.

And when hatred and vengeance streaked too strong, the shadows flickered, the light shifted, and Ryou Bakura would seem a little more hungry the next day.

_I know your name now, Nightmare. Be afraid. For as a dream eater, I consume your kind._

Nimble fingers gave fresh shape to old dreams. Happier memories resurfaced, unbidden, with less things to hold them down under the surface.

The need to finish what had been started - for the same reasons, for different reasons, or for no reasons at all - remained, however. And Ryou, who held onto his mother and sister in his dreams even when he had let go of them in his waking hours, could see no reason for the machinations to stop when they had already moved along so steadily at such a pace that it would be hard to stop them, now, having been going for longer than he was alive.

Dreams made little sense unless you were dreaming. And these day-dreams made all the sense in the world, but needed to be finished in order to be woken from.

Piece by piece, put together.

They'd be ready for the real dreamers soon.


End file.
